kicking and screaming, as AE for TCAS-I. Grazie mille caro. Gianluca! It is because of the inspiring examples set by Wouter and Gianluca that I decided, after ...
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012
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Incoming Editorial
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EAR TCAS-I Readers, It is a great honor and privilege for me to start a two-year term of duty as Editor-in-Chief for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—PART I: REGULAR PAPERS (TCAS-I) and I am very thankful to the Circuits and Systems Society for giving me this opportunity. Thanks to the efforts and leadership of my predecessors, in particular Prof. Wouter Serdijn and Prof. Gianluca Setti, and the past Editorial Boards, TCAS-I is in great shape. The quality and breadth of its articles are excellent. Their timeliness is on par with or better than most of other analogous IEEE scholarly journals. There simply cannot be a better point to start from. For this myself and the incoming Editorial Board owe a big thanks to our predecessors, to the legions of anonymous reviewers, and most importantly, to the contributing authors that have deliberately chosen TCAS-I to be the venue for presenting the findings of their outstanding scientific work. That said there are several challenges ahead that the new Editorial Board and, more in general, our technical society cannot ignore and despite which we ought to be able to operate and thrive. A lot has been recently said about a general slowdown or even a (“great”) stagnation of the pace of technical innovation, and more specifically, its impact on life style, the economy, and jobs creation in the Western world and beyond. Are we innovating in a way that is truly significantly advancing our general well being as it has been previously experienced by our parents and grandparents or, indeed, does much of this effort not seem to be as fertile or effective? On a very different aspect, yet more intimately related to this and other similar journals: is TCAS-I risking, unnecessarily and masochistically, becoming an academic circle where a healthy exchange with industrial innovation needs to be revived? The pressure on researchers to publish, to secure funding to be able to work, support their personnel and themselves, and advance their career is only going to increase. The effect on the quality-versus-quantity trade-off in technical publications together with the ever-present risk of scholarly misconduct has been previously reported. Simultaneously, a rapidly growing number of esteemed colleagues from emerging economies enter this arena and begin facing challenges similar to those of their western peers, plus some more, sometimes resulting in the missteps of the newcomer. The rapidly growing plurality and taxonomy of knowledge dissemination media and venues, dramatically boosted by the Internet, where disclosure of new information can be made instantaneous, pervasive, indeed “viral,” while, in some cases insufficiently vetted, sometimes scientifically questionable. Without digressing further, while it is not TCAS-I’s role to address all of these and other related challenges, nevertheless, this Editorial Board ought to recognize and functionally operate Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCSI.2011.2178169
in this ecosystem. It is upon this Editorial Board, but also the hundreds of anonymous expert reviewers and the Circuits and Systems Society as a whole, to continue keeping this journal unquestionably relevant and timely, and to remain the prime and most authoritative for publishing peer-reviewed scientific articles in the field of modeling, design, analysis, synthesis, and testing of circuits and systems, with diverse physical implementations and technologies. It is the mission of this Editorial Board to guarantee the highest technical quality of the accepted articles while continuing decreasing the time from manuscript submission to electronic publication, to insure the highest possible standards of integrity and scientific professionalism, to maintain and enhance all the conditions allowing that the most compelling, significant, breakthrough, articles on circuits and systems, from academia and industry, are undoubtedly finding their natural home in TCAS-I. I am particularly fortunate to have Prof. Shanthi Pavan of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, serve as the Deputy Editor-in-Chief for TCAS-I. Shanthi has already distinguished himself for his previous excellent service as Associate Editor for both TCAS-I as well as TCAS-II among others. He is competent, prompt, and very pragmatic. I am equally excited to have a very distinguished team of Associate Editors made of some of the most well-respected worldwide, technically excellent and energetic experts in the broad technical field of TCAS-I. They are coming from academia as well as, much more than ever before, industry. My appreciation for their willingness to volunteer for this role, on top of their regular work duties, cannot be overstated. As mentioned early on, my predecessor, Prof. Wouter Serdijn, reported on the very healthy state of this journal on his outgoing editorial last month. I probably preach to the choir when I state to you, readers of TCAS-I, that improvement gets always considerably much harder to achieve when you start from a very solid base, that it always requires more time than anticipated, and that we often don’t know what we actually don’t know when we embark in a new venture. No fear. We, the new Editorial Board, the new Deputy Editor-in-Chief Prof. S. Pavan and I, commit here, a year from now, to report to you further advancements and improvements. In closing, I’d like to thank again Wouter Serdijn. But this time, not for the results achieved or for the extremely hard work and dedication he has personally put on TCAS-I (20 hours a week for two years? Wouter, do you still have a family and a daytime job?). This time I would like to thank him for motivating, inspiring, and guiding me during my recent service as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of TCAS-I. Always accessible, always friendly, infallibly balanced. Bedankt vriend Wouter! In the same vein I would also like to thank Gianluca Setti, who first abducted me to serve as AE of TCAS-II and then again, with me kicking and screaming, as AE for TCAS-I. Grazie mille caro Gianluca! It is because of the inspiring examples set by Wouter and Gianluca that I decided, after much hesitation, to figura-
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012
tively jump off the cliff and put forward my bid to this position. They put this bug into my skull a long time ago and then tactfully and ethically stayed out of the way. When I will be again working for TCAS-I late and tired in the cold Bostonian nights, you know whose portraits I will be praying to.
On behalf of the entire Editorial Board, I wish all of you a happy new year! GABRIELE MANGANARO, Editor-in-Chief Analog Devices Wilmington, MA 01887-3494 USA
Gabriele Manganaro (S’95–M’99–SM’03) received the Dr.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Catania, Italy, in 1994 and 1997, respectively. He did research with ST Microelectronics, Catania, in 1994–1996 and was a Researcher/Lecturer at Texas A&M University, College Station, in 1996–1997. He was a Senior IC Designer of data converters at Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX, in 1998–2001 and then Director of Analog Baseband Design at Engim Inc., Acton, MA, in 2001–2004. He worked for National Semiconductor holding various positions in data converter design in Salem, NH, and Munich, Germany, including Design Director for High Speed Data Conversion, in 2004–2010. Since 2010 he has been Engineering Director for High Speed Data Conversion at Analog Devices, Wilmington, MA. He has authored and coauthored 56 scientific papers, the books Cellular Neural Networks (Springer, 1999) and Advanced Data Converters (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and received 12 U.S. patents. He is a Fellow of the IET and a Member of Sigma Xi. He was (co-) recipient of several scientific awards, including the 1995 CEU Award from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (U.K.), the 1999 IEEE Circuits and Systems Outstanding Young Author Award, and the 2007 IEEE European Solid-State Circuits Conference best paper award. He was an invited lecturer in Europe and the United States and served on technical committees of international conferences including the Data Conversion technical subcommittee of the IEEE Solid-State Circuit Conference (since 2005 to date). He was Guest Editor as well as Associate Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—PART II: EXPRESS BRIEFS (2006–07) and TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—PART I: REGULAR PAPERS (2008–2009) and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—PART I: REGULAR PAPERS (2010–2011). He is now the Editor-in-Chief for TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—PART I: REGULAR PAPERS (term 2012–2013).
